Dungeon of Niflheim

‘Deep breath Maya, deep breath. You can’t risk losing the wine so let him have his little victory. It’s all for the wine!’ She took some deep calming breaths causing her large chest to strain against her clothes in protest, pushing the very limits of the buttons on her dress. But this was necessary, she needed to be calm for the big picture.

Frost watched with rapt attention at every rise and fall of her chest, momentarily entranced but quickly shook his head, his instincts were on full whack, alerting him of the dangerous situation he was in. If he pushed her too far things could end very, very badly for him. The danger was even greater than when he moved to punch Bala though not as obvious, he could feel the looming threat of Maya. Like a wolf waiting to strike at the right time. He listened to his instincts and didn’t agitate her further, but he also didn’t remove the wine bottle from his spatial ring... too risky.

“How’s everything been while I was away?” He turned to ask Nanna and Loki who were enjoying the show.

Momentarily startled Nanna stuttered before replying “Ah...everything’s been fine, no adventurers have entered since they were forcefully removed. There’s a bunch of braver ones camped out near the entrance, but they can’t get in due to the black barrier still being present. Overall, however, they aren’t too afraid, many eager to gain access again.” Nanna reported her findings. Frost left her in charge of monitoring the adventurers and their reactions to their removal while Loki worked with Findlay to manage the monster situation, his forces were in quite a disarray with their diminished numbers, none of them were sure on where to go as their usual squad mates were dead. With the size of the current dungeon there was no way for them to effectively guard the entire place.

“That’s good news,” Frost nodded his head, glad with the report. He was quite worried about having a severely reduced intruder traffic due to the abrupt removal done by Dark but thankfully his worries were unfounded.

‘Thankfully father kept the barrier up otherwise I may have lost even more monsters.’ Frost silently gave Dark a thumbs up but then suddenly remembered something.

“Ah! That old man forgot to give me the sweets he promised.” Frost frowned as he remembered what he was owed and his initial thanks towards Dark turned to irritation, feeling as though he’d been shafted by his father’s stingy personality. The moment however when he was about to possibly bad mouth the old man a magic crest appeared silently above his head and bang! A large basket dropped onto his head knocking him to the floor.

“Ouch” Frost groaned in pain as he dragged himself from the floor, Nanna and Loki quickly moved to help him up and as they did a note written on a piece of paper gently drifted in front of Frost’s face, he picked it up.

.....

“I didn’t forget you ungrateful son, it was just delayed in transit hmph! By the way the barrier will be coming down in an hour.” He read the note aloud before it quickly burst into flames and summoned what looked like a hand made of mana. This hand then proceeded to flick him on the forehead with a fair amount of force before evaporating back into mana particles.

“Bwhahhhhahhahahaha” Maya at the side couldn’t control herself and started shamelessly laughing her guts out to the point she was rolling on the floor. Her built up aggression towards Frost was satisfied perfectly, her young master now had a big red welt on his forehead and looked down right hilarious.

Frost rapidly turned her head around and glared viciously at her, demanding her to be quiet but that only helped slightly, she still sniggered every other moment, unable to hold it in. At least Nanna and Loki put some effort in, covering their mouths in an attempt to stifle their laughter so much so that their faces were turning red and then even blue. They were forbidden from mocking and making fun of their master as part of the slave tattoos forceful contract. Their acts of covering their mouths were a mixture of their own actions as well as the slave magic. As their faces quickly started to turn blue Frost gave them an out.

“Just laugh, I’m giving you permission,” he painfully gave them permission and the moment he did, the laughter of two young children sounded throughout the private space. Maya’s was grating on his ears, but Nanna’s and Loki’s was charming and innocent, he couldn’t help but join them, laughing at his own expense. He did kind of deserve it...or did he. For a few moments Frost genuinely believed that the whole delayed in transit thing was a lie. His father may very well have chosen to keep the sweets if Frost didn’t bring it up. This way he could get back at him somewhat for conning him out of his prized wine. But he chose not to pull on that thread any deeper, it would only end in his loss.

Once the laughter died down and everyone managed to regain their regular temperaments Frost started to regale to Maya, Nanna and Loki what happened during the latter part of the gathering as well as when the next one would be.

“So, the Dark god wants to promote these dungeon wars as a form of competition as well as to train each of your battle capabilities for when the Church of Light, the Light God or even kingdoms decide to move against you. And since you and Gobuske have already competed you’re exempt from the mandatory wars that’ll happen in the next two years?” Maya focused on the dungeon war in particular, she quite enjoyed the battle between Frost and Gobuske, seeing it as good training material.

“Yes, but I’d like to compete in another despite that, the rewards after all were incredibly rewarding, plus it’ll allow me to experience the battle styles of other monsters and engage with my siblings more.” Even without the special rewards granted to him by Dark the amount of DP and levels gained by his monsters was more than substantial. The five rewards he got from Dark were a one time thing and wouldn’t be given to anyone else who competes in a dungeon war, but from killing Gobuske’s monsters and the loss of his own he gained a massive amount of 20,000DP more than he’d gained in this entire past month, add in the 10,000DP he got as a prize and that’s 30,000DP, twice his starting amount. This amount of DP/money would allow him to do a great many things and truly outfit his dungeon with the many ideas he had cooking. But first of all, he needed to replace all the lost monsters.

“That reminds me.” He moved over to the dungeon menu and could see the DP total in the top right hand corner of the screen showing a little of 30,0000, it brought a smile to his face as well as the image of him swimming in cash. The dungeon was set to open again shortly so he couldn’t have the dungeon function properly with its current numbers, so going by the losses reported to him by Loki and the menu he replaced all of the lost monsters, like for like. This cost him around 7000DP, a fairly large chunk of his reserves but thankfully more than covered by the 10000DP reward. Gobuske would likely meet a large loss in that regard, he lost far more and only got 5000DP from Dark and killed a lot less of his monsters. He surmised that all included Gobuske probably made around 12,000 to 14,000DP before re-summoning his monsters. The winner in these wars clearly has a substantial advantage if their forces are greatly superior. Frost suddenly felt sorry for whoever was pitted against Yami or Aqua or even Pyro for their mandatory battle. No one would likely willingly chose to fight against the big 3 therefore it’d be picked at random by Dark. Personally, he wouldn’t mind trying his own against Yami or Aqua, although he’d likely have no chance of winning, he felt he’d learn a lot and given their relationship they’d likely not be too harsh on him. Pyro however he’d only ever fight against if he was sure to win, losing to that annoying barbarian would give him ammunition that he did not need.